Synopsys Collaborates With TSMC to Accelerate 3nm Innovation, Enabling Next-Generation SoC Design

Certified Synopsys design solutions enable HPC, mobile, 5G, and AI SoCs and offer cutting-edge power savings and performance

Synopsys, Inc. announced that TSMC has certified Synopsys’ digital and custom design platforms for TSMC’s 3-nanometer (nm) process technology. This certification, based on TSMC’s latest design rule manual (DRM) and process design kits (PDKs), is the result of an extensive collaboration with rigorous validation to deliver design solutions for optimized power, performance, and area (PPA), which accelerate the path to next-generation designs.

“We’re pleased with the result of our multi-year collaboration with Synopsys in delivering platform solutions on TSMC’s advanced process that help our mutual customers achieve silicon innovations benefiting from the significant power and performance boost of our 3nm process technology and quickly launch their new product innovations to market,” said Suk Lee, senior director of the Design Infrastructure Management Division at TSMC. “Certification of the Synopsys design solutions enables our mutual customers’ designs to be implemented on TSMC N3 process with high confidence for optimized PPA.”

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Through a close collaboration with TSMC, Synopsys developed key enablement features and new technologies to ensure full-flow correlation from synthesis to place-and-route to timing and physical signoff for TSMC’s N3 processes. Synopsys’ Fusion Compiler RTL-to-GDSII solution and IC Compiler II place-and-route solution have been enabled with extended support of TSMC’s N3 process. Synopsys’ Design Compiler NXT synthesis solution has been enhanced to enable designers to take full advantage of TSMC’s 3nm technology, delivering improved quality of results (QoR) and tighter correlation to Synopsys’ IC Compiler II place-and-route solution using a new, highly accurate approach to resistance and capacitance estimation. The PrimeTime signoff solution supports the advanced multi-input switching (MIS) for accurate timing analysis and signoff closure. Additionally, Design Compiler NXT is enabled for TSMC N3 process for both HPC and mobile designs.

To optimize some of the special features with the TSMC 3nm process technology, the Synopsys digital design platform has been enhanced to support pin density aware placement and global route modeling for better routing convergence on standard cell pins, concurrent legalization and optimization (CLO) for faster timing convergence, a new cell map (cell density) infrastructure to maximize available white space to improve PPA, interconnect optimization by auto generating via pillar structures and partial parallel routing for HPC design, and power-aware mixed driving strength multi-bit flip flop optimization for low-power designs.

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In the Synopsys custom design platform, Custom Compiler has been enhanced to accelerate the implementation of 3nm analog designs. These enhancements – co-developed with and validated by early 3nm users, including the Synopsys DesignWare IP team – reduce the effort to meet new design rules and other 3nm technology requirements. The Synopsys HSPICE, FineSim and CustomSim simulation solutions deliver enhanced turnaround time for TSMC 3nm designs and provide signoff coverage for TSMC 3nm circuit simulation and reliability requirements.

“Our collaboration with TSMC on highly differentiated solutions for its advanced 3nm process technology allows customers to begin designing their increasingly complex SoCs with greater confidence,” said Charles Matar, senior vice president of System Solutions and Ecosystem Enablement for the Design Group at Synopsys. “The result of our collaboration enables designers to take full advantage of the significant power, performance, and area improvements of an advanced EUV process, while accelerating the innovation for their differentiated SoCs.”

Synopsys technology files are available from TSMC for the 3nm technology process. Key products in the Synopsys design platforms are certified:

Digital design solutions

• Fusion Compiler and IC Compiler II place-and-route solutions

Signoff

• PrimeTime timing signoff
• PrimePower power signoff
• StarRC extraction signoff
• IC Validator physical signoff
• NanoTime custom timing signoff
• ESP-CV custom functional verification
• QuickCap NX parasitic field solver

SPICE simulation and custom design

• HSPICE, CustomSim, and FineSim simulation solutions
• CustomSim reliability analysis
• Custom Compiler custom design

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